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Simone de Beauvoir:1908-1986

www.prshockley.org

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This lecture is largely indebted to the article,

“Simone de Beauvoir” at Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy and Samuel Stumpf’s, Philosophy:

History & Problems, 5th edition (New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1971, 1994.

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Simone de Beauvoir

Brief Summary:

1. French existentialist philosopher

2. Best know as a “female”theoretician and novelist

3. Lover and companion of Jean Paul Sartre (she considered herself one of his disciples).

4. Best known for a work, The Second Sex (1949), which considers the “female condition”within an existentialist framework.

What is Existentialism?

It is a historical, philosophical & literary movement that gained attention in

Europe, particularly France, immediately after World War II.

Existentialism focuses on the uniqueness of each person as

distinguished from abstract universal human qualities (rational metaphysics).

Existentialism is concerned about existence, human existence, and the conditions and quality of the existing

person. Why this concern?

Individuals have been pushed into the background by philosophical systems

of thought, historical events, & technological forces.

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Further look at Existentialism:

The “individual” has been neglected, overlooked, and marginalized.

Ex. Consider Montaigne’s remark when studying Aristotle’s ethics:

“I can’t recognize most of my daily doings when they appear in Aristotle.”

Nietzsche once said, “to our scholars, strangely enough, the most pressing question does not occur: to what end is their work…useful?”

Existentialists (and pragmatists) complain that philosophy, historical events, and technology have ignored the intimate concerns of people.

a. Philosophy has become too abstract, technical, and disconnected.

b. Historical events, particularly wars, totally neglect the feelings, life, and aspirations of peoples.

c. Technology, which was suppose to be aid to humanity gained so much power that it has “forced people” to fit their lives into the “rhythm of machines.”

Upshot: People are losing their peculiar human qualities. Their identities have been translated from “persons” into “pronouns”, from “subjects” into “objects,”and from an "I” into an “it.”

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6 Major Existential Themes:In order to better understand Simone de Beauvoir we need to have a better understanding of existentialism. But existentialism is very difficult to understand because existentialists themselves differ greatly on how it is to be defined and delineated. However, from their writings six patterns or themes repeatedly emerge:

1. Individual and systems;

2. Intentionality;

3. Being and Absurdity;

4. The nature and significance of choice;

5. The role of extreme experiences;

6. Nature of communication.

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6 Existential Themes:1. Philosophical systems, especially rational metaphysics, are inadequate to grasp

individual existence-for people are secondary to the concept it embodies (philosophical systems (e.g., rational metaphysics).

a. In a philosophical system, such as rational metaphysics, people are understood in terms of some concept or concepts they happen to embody. So, individual existence is understood with a conceptual scheme whereby there is a connection made between the individual part and the conceptual scheme of the universe.

b. For example, consider rational metaphysics:

Rational metaphysics argues that reality has a specific nature independent of our thoughts or feelings; the physical world exists’every entity has a specific nature & interact according to their nature; every action has a cause and an effect. Reality is absolute. It has a specific nature independent of our thoughts or feelings. The world around us is real. An object has a specific nature and it must be consistent to that nature. A proper metaphysical worldview must aim to understand reality correctly.

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6 Existential Themes:Philosophical, rationalistic systems are inadequate in grasping our individual existence-which always evades complete conceptualization. Why? Reason has limits.

This does not mean one is committed to irrationalism or that natural sciences, metaphysics, or mathematics should not be valued. In fact, some like Karl Jaspers, contend that reason simply needs to be understood in new and less restrictive ways:

a. Empiricists also share this critique against metaphysical rationalism.

b. According to Alasdair MacIntyre, in countries where empiricism has a long standing history, existentialism does not seem to flourish.

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6 Existential Themes:2. Intentionality: Reacting against

psychology that attempts to explain beliefs and emotions in purely naturalistic terms, they emphasize that the object of belief or of emotion is not an object or a state of affairs in the external world.

Thus, one major existentialist theme or outlook is that human life is understood from the inside rather than pretending to understand it from an outside, "objective" point-of-view.

They emphasize the importance of individuals and their freedom to participate in their own creation. It is a psychology that emphasizes our creative processes far more than our adherence to laws, be they human, natural, or divine.

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6 Existential Themes:3. Being and Absurdity:

Since reality always evades adequate conceptualization, are especially apt to treat “Being” as a name, the name, in fact, of the “realm” which we vainly aspire to comprehend:

Kierkegaard once said: “What the philosophers say about Reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see here in a window which reads: Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled for only the sign is for sale.” ~ Either/Or, 1843.

Upshot: Scientific thought is inadequate for understanding reality; we need poetry and philosophy (anti-reductionistic).

French existentialists, like Sartre, go so far as to say that there is no ultimate explanation of why things are they are and are not otherwise. The fallout:

1. Nature of things are flawed, “fallen,” and the experience of it arouses anxiety and perplexity.

2. Since there is no ultimate explanation, we are free.

You are free to “make yourself.”

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6 Existential Themes:4. Freedom and Choice:

The possibility of choice is the central feature of our human nature.

a. You do not have a fixed nature that limits or determines your choices.

b. It is your choices that bring whatever nature they have into being.

Three Separate Contentions:

1. Choice is ubiquitous: All my actions imply choices. Even when I do not choose explicitly, as I may not do in the majority of cases, my actions bear witness to an implicit choice.

2. Although many of my actions I employ are themselves chosen, the criteria which I employ are themselves chosen; there are no rational grounds for such choices.

3. No causal explanation of my actions can be given.

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6 Existential Themes:5. Anxiety, Dread, and Death:

We have moments whereby we experience a “generalized dread.” Of what? Of nothing in particular. But what is this nothing, this void we confront?

For Kierkegaard, it is related to original sin.

For Heidegger, it is an aspect of the universe. We have an awareness of our approaching death.

For Jaspers, it is the generalized stress on a range of situations in which the fragility of our existence is brought home to us.

For Sartre it is a confrontation with the fact of our human freedom, of our unmade future.

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6 Existential Themes:6. The form of communication:

Since they emphasize the sovereignty of individual choices and the importance of being “situated”, they do not present their outlook in the manner of traditional philosophy (argumentation, logic, etc). The reader has to make his or her own choices in the light of his or her own experiences. While they may argue with the reader, these presentations tend to be expressed in a hypothetical way: “if you choose this starting point, then what logically follows…”

They present these themes creatively in stories.

Ten Important Existential Novels:

10. Fight Club by Chuck Palanniuk (1996)

9. Journey to the End of the Earth by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1932)

8. Man’s Fate by Andre Malraux (1932)

7. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (1928)

6. The Woman in the Dunes by Kobe Abe (1962)

5. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)

4. Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)

3. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)

2. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1863)

1. The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942).

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

For Kierkegaard, to “think in existence”means to recognize that you are faced with personal choices… you are constantly in an “existential situation.”Thus, your thinking ought to deal with your own personal situation with a view to come to terms with the problems of alternative choices.

Abstract systems of philosophy “falsifies” people’s understanding of reality because it moves attention away from the “concrete person” to “abstract universals”, asking us to “think” instead of “to be.”

1813-55

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

Kierkegaard makes a distinction between the “spectator” and the “actor”, arguing that only the actor is involved in existence. While the spectator can be said to exist, the term “existence” does not properly belong to inactive or inert objects, whether they are spectators or rocks. Consider this illustration by Kierkegaard:

Two kinds of people in a wagon, one holding the reins while asleep and the other fully awake. In the first case, the horse goes along the familiar road without any direction from the sleeping person, whereas in the other case the person is truly a driver. Surely, in one sense it can be said that both people exists, but “existence” must refer to quality in the individual, namely, his conscious participation in an act.

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

He revolted against the rational emphasis in Greek wisdom, which, he charted, had permeated subsequent philosophy and Christian Theology. Greek philosophy had been too greatly influenced by a high regard for mathematics. While he did not reject the proper uses of math and science, he rejected the assumption that “science” could be successfully used to understand human nature. In fact, other than for the general, the universal, math and science have no place for the human person.

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

Kierkegaard also rejected Plato’s platonic philosophy with his emphasis on the

universal Forms because Plato assumes that if one knew the Good he would do it.

But Kierkegaard thought that such an approach to ethics was a falsification of

people’s real predicament.

Even when a person has knowledge, he or she is still in the predicament of having to

make a decision.

So, these grand formulations of philosophical systems are only “prolonged detours”

which eventually come to nothing unless they lead us back again to the individual.

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

Over and against universal problems stands life, that is, each person’s life, making

demands upon the individual, and at these

critical moments general and abstract thought do not help.

The biblical story of Abraham is an example

Kierkegaard uses regarding the human condition:

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What does it mean to think Existentially?

What kind of knowledge can help Abraham decide whether to obey God, to sacrifice his son? In this story Kierkegaard says that we see that the most poignant moments in life are personal, where one becomes aware of oneself as a subject. This subjective element is obscured if not denied by rational thought, which considers only a person’s objective characteristics, those characteristics that all people have in common. But subjectivity is what makes up each person’s unique existence. For this reason, objectivity can’t give the whole truth about the individual self.. That is why man, rationality, and science are incapable of guiding a person to genuine existence.

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Sartre’s Version of Existentialism Involves the following ideas:

1. We have an active role in forging our destiny. “Hitherto philosophers had merely understood the world: the point, however, is to change it” (Marx).

2. “True philosophy should seek its foundation exclusively in man, and,more specifically, in the essence of his concrete worldly existence” (Husserl).

3. Existence precedes essence: We can’t explain the nature of humanity in the same way that we describe a product. For ex., when I consider my French press coffee maker, I know that

it has been made by someone who had in mind a conception of it, including what it would be used for, and how it would be made.

1905-1980

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Sartre’s Version of Existentialism: People are simply that which they make themselves.

Thus, even before it is made, the French press is already conceived of as having as having a definite purpose and as being the product of a definite process. If by the essence of the French press we mean the procedure by which it was made and the purposes for which it was produced, the French press’ essence can be said to precede its existence.

Taking atheism seriously, Sartre believed that there is no given human nature precisely because there is no God to have a conception of it. Human nature can’t be defined in advance because it is not completely thought out in advance. Thus, people merely exist and only later become their essential selves.

To say that existence precedes essence means that people first of all exist, confront themselves, emerge in the world, and define themselves afterwards. At first, a person simply is. In essence, people are simply that which they make of themselves.

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Sartre’s Version of Existentialism: People are simply that which they make themselves.

1. Can people set out to make of themselves anything they wish?

2. What gives a person dignity?

For Sartre, what gives a person dignity is possession of a subjective life, meaning that an individual is something which moves itself toward a future and is conscious that it is doing so.

3. Two different modes of being:

“Being-in-itself” (the way you are; the way a rock is) and “Being-for-itself” (you are a conscious subject which differentiates you from a rock). To be a conscious subject is stand constantly before a future.

“The most important consequence of placing

existence before essence is not only that people create

themselves but that people’s responsibility for their

existence rests squarely upon each person. A stone cannot

be responsible. And if people’s essential nature were already given and fixed, they could not be responsible for what they are.”

~ Samuel Stumpf, History & Problems , 513.

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Sartre’s Version of Existentialism: People are simply that which they make themselves.

4. If people are what they make themselves, they have no one to blame for what they are except themselves. Moreover, when people choose in the process of making themselves, they choose not only for themselves but for all people. Thus, they are responsible not only for their own individuality but, argues Sartre, they are also responsible for everyone else.

5. When we create our own values, thus creating ourselves, we also create at the same time an image of our human nature as we believe it ought to be: All people must choose, must make decisions and although there is no authoritative guide, we must still choose and at the time ask ourselves whether we would be willing for others to choose the same action. Thus, anguish sets in (for we are responsible for others).

“The most important consequence of placing

existence before essence is not only that people create

themselves but that people’s responsibility for their

existence rests squarely upon each person. A stone cannot

be responsible. And if people’s essential nature were already given and fixed, they could not be responsible for what they are.”

~ Samuel Stumpf, History & Problems , 513.

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Setting the Stage for Ethics of Ambiguity:“Freedom is hard to face!”

1. Although the human being must be free and is bound to some extent by circumstances, all else up to the individual. One can face up to one's freedom or try to escape it. It is easy to pretend that everything is out of control, to hide under the banner of determinism. Freedom is hard to face.

2. One reason why freedom poses such difficulties for Sartre is that he believed there is nowhere to look for guidance about how to use it. He even denied that there are any moral rules to which we can turn.

3. So it seems that any value placed on anything is purely arbitrary, and that Sartre is forced to subjective relativism.

4. So, what is Simone de Beauvoir’s project?

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Overall Project of Ethics of Ambiguity:

1. Simone de Beauvoir's work was an attempt to save Sartre's philosophy from subjective relativism.

a. She grants the apparent absurdity or meaninglessness of existence

b. There is a standard of ethical worth found in the attitude toward freedom itself.

c. How? One faces one's freedom when one adopts a life project, when one undertakes to define what “one is to be.”

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Overall Project of Ethics of Ambiguity:

3. Facing one’s freedom resolutely by adopting a life project, she endorses the moral virtues of courage, patience and fidelity (but not in an Aristotelian way… subduing the passions).

4. At the same time, freedom is to be respected, so that one should not aid in others' flight from it, nor should they deprive others of their options. However, this principle is not grounded in pure reason, but only in a recognition of a common human condition.

5. Describing consciousness as ambiguous, Beauvoir identifies our ambiguity with the idea of failure. We can never fulfill our passion for meaning for we will never succeed in fully revealing the meaning of the world, and never fulfill our desire to impress our meaning on the world.

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Overall Project of Ethics of Ambiguity:

“The Nectar is in the Journey!” ~ John J. McDermott

6. She is inclined to ethical projects that acknowledge our limits and recognize the future as open. From this perspective her ethics of ambiguity is considered to be an ethic of existential hope.

7. Can separate existing individuals be bound to each other? Can each one forge laws for all? The Ethics of Ambiguity insists that we can. It does this by arguing that evil resides in the denial of freedom (mine and others); that we are responsible for ensuring the existence of the conditions of freedom (the material conditions of a minimal standard of living and the political conditions of freedom); and that we can neither affirm nor live our freedom without also affirming the freedom of others.

Thus de Beauvoir characterized existentialism

as "austere, sad, but not evasive." It is best accepted by those who have already met many challenges of life

head on, who have confidence in their life-

projects. For these people, the injunction "Do what you must, come what may!" can

be answered without hesitation.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

8. This book is her attempt to harmonize Sartre’s view of human existence with ethics. Sartre struggled with the relationship of ethics for he believed that the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence.”

9. Since "existence precedes essence, we are radically free. Although we are mired in definite objective circumstances (what de Beauvoir terms as 'facticity'), many choices are open to us. In fact, human consciousness itself is nothing more than the kind of thing that can take into account alternative possibilities.

10.Human freedom is “projected” toward an open future.

11.She condemns the “spirit of seriousness”whereby we identify ourselves with certain fixed values, tents, or prejudices.

“"There is no more obnoxious way to punish a man than to

force him to perform acts which make no sense to him, as when one empties and fills

the same ditch indefinitely, when one makes soldiers who are being punished march up and down, when one forces a

schoolboy to copy lines.“

Simone de Beauvoir

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

12.Beauvoir's argument for ethical freedom:

a. She analyzes the ways in which the adult's existence as a moral agent is conditioned by the fact that we all begin as children who find ourselves embedded in a world already endowed with meaning.

b. We are born into the condition which Beauvoir calls the "serious world." This is a world of ready made values and established authorities. This is a world where obedience is demanded.

c. This child's world, however, is neither alienating nor stifling, for children are not yet ready for the responsibilities of freedom. They are free to play, to develops creative capacities, meaning-making abilities without being held responsible.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

d. Considering these two dimensions of the child's life, its imaginative freedom and freedom from responsibility, Beauvoir determines that the child lives a metaphysically privileged existence; for children, she says, experience the joys but not the anxieties offreedom.

e. Beauvoir describes children as mystified. By this she means that they believe that the foundations of the world are secure and that their place in the world is naturally given and unchangeable.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

All of us pass through the age of adolescence, not all of us take up its ethical demands. The fact of our initial dependency has moral implications; for it predisposes us to the temptations of bad faith, strategies by which we deny our existential freedom and our moral responsibility, and sets our desire in the direction of a nostalgia for those lost days. Looking to return to the security of that metaphysically privileged time, some of us evade the responsibilities of freedom by choosing to remain children, that is, to live under the authority of others.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

Beauvoir does not object to the mystifications of childhood. She acknowledges that they may be necessary for the child's survival. To treat adults as children, however, is immoral, and evil. To choose to remain a child is an act of bad faith. Whether or not we live a moral life depends on the material conditions of our situation and on our response to the ambiguities and failures of intentionality. If we are exploited, we cannot be accused of bad faith. If we are not, we are accountable for our response to the experience of freedom. Attending to the joys of freedom, we take up projects of justice. Vulnerable to the anxieties of failure and fearful of the responsibilities of freedom, we succumb to unjustifiable mystifications which justify our passivity and the exploitation of others.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

Beauvoir embodies the complexity of these ethical choices in the figures of the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man, the critical thinker and the artist-writer. The point of delineating these human types is several fold. It is a way of distinguishing between two types of unethical positions. One type, portrayed in the portraits of the sub-man and the serious man, refuses to recognize the experience of freedom. The other type, depicted in the pictures of the nihilist, the adventurer, and the maniacal passionate man, misreads the meanings of freedom. There is however, the passion of the generous man. Beauvoir explains that passion is linked with generosity, specifically the generosity of recognizing the other's difference and protecting it from becoming an object of another's will. This passion is the ground of the ethical life. It is the source of the distinct ethical position of the artist-writer.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

Having described the different ways in which freedom is evaded or misused, she establishes the difference between ontological & ethical freedom. Our freedom is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ethical action. To meet the conditions of the ethical, freedom must be used properly. It must embrace the ties that bind me to others & take up the appeal - an act whereby I call on others, in their freedom, to join me in bringing certain values, projects conditions into being. The artist-writer embodies the ethical ideal in several respects. Her writing expresses the subjective passion that grounds the ethical life. It provides a view of the world in its material complexities-- complexities which may alienate me from my freedom or open me to my freedom. It provides visions of the future which as open and contingent avoid the mystifications that validate sacrificing the present for the future. It establishes the freedom of the other as the condition of mine, for the life of the artist-writer, like the ethical life requires the participation of others.

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Ethics of Ambiguity:

The Ethics of Ambiguity does not avoid the question of violence. Arguing that violence is sometimes necessary, she uses the example of the Nazi soldier, and arguing that to liberate the oppressed we may have to destroy the tyrants. Beauvoir recognizes that though it may be justified by the circumstances, violence is an assault on the other's freedom (however misused) and as such marks our failure to respect the "we" of our humanity.

The Ethics of Ambiguity provides an analysis of our existential-ethical situation that joins a hard headed realism (violence is a fact of our condition) with demanding requirements. It is unique, however, in aligning this realism and these requirements, with the passion of generosity and a mood of joy. However counter intuitive it sounds, Beauvoir aligns seriousness with an evasion of freedom.

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Bibliography:

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.• The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy,

2nd edition, edited by Robert Audi.• Samuel Stumpf, Philosophy: History &

Problems.